


The Blacksmith’s Grandson

by Joodiff



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: F/M, New Beginnings, Old Romance, Reunion, life story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:38:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joodiff/pseuds/Joodiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the New Avengers episode "K is for Kill" Steed tells Mrs Peel a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blacksmith’s Grandson

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my "Avengers" stories dredged up from the archives. Written in 1999, this was an attempt to piece together all sorts of canonical hints about Steed's life and fit them into an unexpected backstory. And, of course, to reunite Steed and Mrs Peel. Forgive any mistakes - I wrote it a long, long time ago! :)

  
**DISCLAIMER:** I own nothing.

* * *

**The Blacksmith’s Grandson**

 by Joodiff, 1999.

* * *

 

Well, we’ve talked a lot this evening, haven’t we, Mrs Peel? I think - I know - we both have our own ideas about what the future might hold for us, but there are so many things that yet need to be said. So many things that need to be explained and examined. You still don’t really understand me, do you? Even now, you still don’t really know just who and what I am. I can hardly blame you for that. Perhaps it’s finally time I told you some of the things that I always managed to avoid telling you... then. Perhaps, if you begin to understand me, you will understand why for me, at least, nothing has ever been as simple as it seemed. Sit down and let me pour you a drink, Mrs Peel, and I’ll tell you the bare bones of my story...

 

Heathcliff. The foundling. The cuckoo in the nest. You know the Bronte story, I assume? Of course you do, how silly of me. Forgive me. Well, my own story isn’t very much different, Mrs Peel. Not really. A decade ago, I would never have contemplated telling you that story. A decade ago, I had no reason to tell you it. Times change. People change.

 

Ours was never a conventional sort of romance, was it? Star-crossed lovers? Hardly Romeo and Juliet, I admit; but star-crossed, nonetheless.

 

I have never really known what I wanted. What I really wanted. Never. I suppose that fundamental predicament has made me what I am. What I have always been, and always will be. Perhaps it helps explain why, even now, I have difficulty believing that I could ever really know what I genuinely wanted for the future.

 

It is a very nice house, isn’t it? Expensive, Mrs Peel. Very, very expensive. All this land, the stables, the paddocks. The ultimate declaration of who and what I am. Of who and what I choose to be. Judge me by all this, it says to visitors; I am a country squire. A gentleman of means. I work because I wish to, not because I have to. Here, I have my dogs and my horses, my idealised reality of everything I am.

 

Heathcliff. I was brought up as Sir Robert’s only son. Robert desperately wanted a son, but sired only daughters. To him, I imagine, I was both a blessing and a curse.

 

Robert was the younger son, did you know that? Oh, yes. Robert had a brother. William. When Sir Henry died, it was William, not Robert, who inherited Arlingham, the country home of the de V. Steeds for countless generations. William fought in the Great War. A soldier of some distinction, it has to be said. War changed William, just as it changed so many of us. I can understand how he felt, returning to an England that had changed forever in his absence. It is, shall we say, an unsettling experience, coming home to find that all the things you thought were immutable have been swept away forever. It happened to me, too, many years later. But I digress. I’m sorry, Mrs Peel. Where was I?

 

Oh, yes. William Steed. I don’t think he did very much, immediately after the war. Gambled too much and drank too much, I daresay. I don’t imagine he expected his father to suddenly have a heart attack and die, leaving him as the sole heir to Arlingham and its modest fortune. William was unmarried when he claimed his inheritance, and he remained a bachelor until the day he died. Which, ironically, was not that many years after his father.

 

I think my first memories are of Arlingham. Not of the great house itself, of course, but of the estate and the little cottages near the fields and woods that bordered the park. I remember William, too, quite distinctly. A forbidding, towering figure who often rode a big grey horse. Do you know, as a young child, I never knew that even pure white horses are always called grey. I remember the summer sun glistening on the smooth surface of Arlingham’s lake. I remember the sound of wood pigeons in the trees. I remember the day that the hearse, drawn by four black-plumed horses rolled solemnly down the long drive to the lane that led into the village. That was the day when my life changed forever, Mrs Peel, because that was the day my father was laid to rest in the de V. Steed family crypt, and the day my uncle inherited Arlingham.

 

I know you used to wonder why I was so reluctant to talk about my immediate family. Doubtless you’d heard all those rumours about bad blood between myself and my father. You were curious, but far too polite and well-bred to ask all the questions that teased you. As for me, well, I have never been noted for my ability to be loquacious about things that really matter. You know that only too well, don’t you, my dear?

 

Well, Sir Robert was my uncle, Mrs Peel, not my father. My father broke his neck out hunting, leaving Arlingham to his brother, and entrusting his dark, shameful secret to only his closest family. Skeletons rattle loudly in the Steed family cupboard. They always have.

 

If I am honest, I owe everything I was brought up to be to Amanda Steed. Robert’s wife. It was Amanda, not Robert, who sent for my mother, who stood me in the middle of Arlingham Hall’s huge drawing room and decided my future. I remember it so well, Mrs Peel. I was eight years old, and I can remember Amanda’s voice commanding, _“Look at him...”_

 

 _Look at him,_ she said sharply to her reluctant husband, _Look at him, Robert. He’s a Steed..._

 

And I was, Mrs Peel. I was. A bastard Steed, perhaps, but a de V. Steed, nonetheless. William’s son. No less Sir Henry’s grandchild than Sarah or Amelia, or any of the other daughters Robert and Amanda were later to have. I didn’t know it at the time, not really, but they did.

 

My real mother? My mother is long-since dead, Mrs Peel. I could try to pretend that she died of a broken heart when her only child was taken from her care, but I said earlier that I would be honest with you. About everything. My mother was the blacksmith’s daughter. There’s a certain irony in that, don’t you think? Horses, you might say, are in my blood. The blacksmith virtually disowned her when she announced she was carrying the Squire’s illegitimate offspring. Working-class propriety, you might say. He threw her out of his house then and there for her transgression. Truly, I don’t know if it was a sense of decency, or the desire to avoid a public scandal that led my father to install the blacksmith’s daughter in one of Arlingham’s estate cottages. Certainly, he had no intention of making her mistress of Arlingham.

 

The blacksmith’s daughter. Should I also mention that the blacksmith’s wife was an Irish girl of questionable ancestry? Perhaps not. Heathcliff, as I say. Gypsy blood? Oh, yes. Just a touch. Trite, perhaps, but there you are. The blacksmith’s daughter -

 

Her name, Mrs Peel? Does it really matter?

 

Rosalind. The blacksmith’s daughter was called Rosalind. I believe Sir Robert paid her. Or, at least, I believe Sir Robert provided her with the means to leave the village for good, because she disappeared not two days after I was moved into Arlingham to begin a new life as a Steed. Years later, curiosity drove me to investigate what became of her. Blood, they say, is thicker than water. Apparently, she died in London. Ironic. My whole life is plagued by irony, Mrs Peel.

 

Perhaps I would have been happier as the blacksmith’s grandson, who knows? I might have served in the Light Infantry, and come back to England to work as a farmhand or stable-lad. I might have had a cottage and a wife, and a brace of strapping sons. I might have been blissfully ignorant of who and what I really was. I might have been content. Settled. Who knows?

 

I wasn’t happy as the Squire’s adopted son. Life at Arlingham Hall was a kind of purgatory. There was too much to learn, too much to absorb. I wasn’t the young gentleman I should have been. I was a rough village boy, used to running wild in the fields and scrapping in the playground of the village school. What did I know about etiquette, about gentility? No-one had taught me to speak only when I was spoken to, no-one had taught me to read the Bible on a Sunday, which knives and forks to use, or a thousand other social graces I needed to know to belong at Arlingham. At first I think I was too bewildered to learn, and then I was certainly too rebellious to learn. I didn’t belong in the world that had adopted me, and I didn’t think I would ever belong there. I didn’t think I wanted to belong there.

 

Patience was never Robert’s strongest point. When he couldn’t check my wildness, my wilfulness by any other means, he resorted to thrashing me. It took him a long, long time to learn that to do so was an exercise in futility. The first eight years of my life had been hard, Mrs Peel. I don’t suppose you can imagine how hard. Small English villages are notoriously parochial, and the attitudes of bigoted parents pass too easily to cruel offspring. All those vicious taunts and insults... After all the torments I had endured in my short life, I wasn’t afraid of being beaten. We fought the battle for several years, he and I. Sir Robert was determined to make a gentleman out of me, and eventually he won. Superficially, he won.

 

When the time came, he had enough confidence in his victory to send me to Eton. Many, many Steeds before me had been educated there. To all intents and purposes, I was Sir Robert’s son, and I was a Steed. My status was assured before I set foot in the place. Eton learned very quickly that I was a very different breed of Steed. I might have worn the haughty tailcoat and top hat, and I might have displayed the arrogant superiority of a young gentleman, but beneath the veneer, I was still the blacksmith’s grandson.

 

You don’t look very surprised, Mrs Peel. I wonder why? Perhaps because somehow you always knew that I was not ever quite what I appeared to be?

 

Did you know? On some subconscious level, did you know what I really was? Perhaps not; but you knew I was far from a conventional example of the class and society I purported to represent.

 

I’m a hybrid, Mrs Peel. The half-bred, bastard son of an old and distinguished family. The blacksmith’s grandson.

 

I was never a fool. I might have rebelled against Robert’s attempts to tame me, but I was shrewd enough to understand the benefits of my new status. No-one could fault my manners by the time I went to Eton. A Steed to my fingertips, I was, and if I disgraced myself by fighting dirty in the boxing ring, or by gouging viciously in the rugby scrum, well, what did it matter when I was so obviously a young gentleman from an eminent family. Who was going to suppose for a moment that I was anything else?

 

The army wasn’t very much different. The war had started, and when I left Eton, I went straight to Sandhurst like most of my peers. Went to be trained as an officer. The Steeds have all been Guardsmen, did you know that? Even William was a Captain in the Coldstream Guards. I was a Guardsman, too, in the beginning. Blues and Royals, Mrs Peel, part of the Guards Armoured Division. Only in my war we used tanks, not horses. I was out in North Africa almost before I knew it. Out in the desert, fighting an enemy we hardly ever saw through the sandstorms. You know what happened out there. I remember telling you about it once. I was wounded and sent home to convalesce. I never returned to front-line soldiering.

 

The army had apparently recognised something in me that no-one else had, and they knew exactly how to exploit it. I was transferred into the Intelligence Corps the moment I was fit for duty. Sir Robert was incandescent with rage at the implied insult to his family. It didn’t matter to me. I had seen enough of the front-line to know I didn’t like it there. I didn’t lack courage, but the pointless waste of life angered me. Unconventional warfare suited me better. I had a certain aptitude for it. Skulduggery came quite, quite naturally to me. Guile, some might call it. I prefer to think of it as native cunning.

 

The rest of my war was interesting. Covert missions behind enemy lines, clandestine operations, all that sort of thing. Sir Robert didn’t approve. The Steeds, as I say, were Guardsmen. It didn’t matter that I was promoted more than once, that I had, rather surprisingly, managed to distinguish myself. It didn’t matter that when I went back to Arlingham, I went back as a full Major with a row of medals on my chest. It was still embarrassing to Sir Robert that his son - his adopted son - was an Intelligence Officer, not an officer in one of the elite Guards Regiments.

 

Inevitably, the war changed me, Mrs Peel. It took me away from Arlingham, away from Eton and Sandhurst, away from all the things designed to mould me into a certain image. When I was six miles behind enemy lines, living on my wits, it didn’t matter a damn what my lineage was. All that mattered was survival. Sometimes it was touch-and-go, but I did survive, and when the war ended, I went home on leave to Arlingham a very different man. I had become, in many ways, exactly the gentleman Sir Robert had wanted me to be, but in many other ways, I had learned to be something else, something rather individual. I wasn’t hidebound by the weight of tradition as Robert was, and I had learned the importance of relying on my own thoughts and ideas.

 

Bad blood. I heard Sir Robert darkly say it when he thought I was out of earshot, I heard the villagers mutter it as I walked to the pub on the green. Eventually, I went to see my grandfather in his smithy. He didn’t know who I was when I first strolled in. He just kept hammering away at his anvil, and I remember being impressed at how strong he was, even in his later years. Muscles like corded rope. When he realised who I was, I can’t say he was delighted. I don’t think my grandfather ever got over the disgrace of his daughter’s misbehaviour. He was, in fact, an exceedingly embittered old man who had lost his daughter and then buried his wife, and who had no intention of welcoming his illegitimate grandson with open arms.

 

Neither fish nor fowl, isn’t that what they say, Mrs Peel? I was a Steed, but the Steeds viewed me with suspicion; I was a Robson, but my grandfather barely recognised the fact. My mother had named me after him, Mrs Peel. Sir Robert always called me “Jonathan”, but my given name is “John”. My mother, as far as anyone knows, never put foot inside a church from the moment her father disowned her, and certainly, I was never baptised as an infant. I’m sorry, I’m digressing again. Would you like another drink? It seems to be getting very late, but if you’re in no hurry to be getting back to Town...?

 

I went back to the army fully intending to stay there. In the army I had a place. I was Major Steed, Intelligence Corps. I thought, at the time, that even if I belonged nowhere else, then the army was a home and family of sorts. It was a good life, really, once peace had broken out. There was plenty to be done. Investigations, intelligence gathering, that sort of thing. When the time finally came, though, I didn’t extend my commission. To this day, I’m not sure why. Perhaps I’d realised that I had to try to find my own peace?

 

Of course, I went back to Arlingham. It was, after all, the nearest thing to home that I knew. Only the youngest of my sisters - or my cousins, if you want to be more accurate - were still living there. Sarah and Amelia had both married, and Sarah had a child of her own. Sir Robert hadn’t mellowed. Amanda was as gracious as ever, but Robert’s welcome was lukewarm at best. It was very quickly suggested that I should seek some kind of employment. Something suitable. I was rather afraid that he favoured the clergy. Another irony, given my Godless state.

 

Perversity made me visit my grandfather to ask his advice. As ever, he was wary and gruff, but unlike my father, John Robson told me to do as I pleased. I seriously considered it. I had a hankering to go back to North Africa, but in the end, more to keep the peace than anything else, I allowed myself to be coerced into a career with the Foreign Office. I think Robert had some idea that I might, eventually, become an Ambassador. Which, at least, was a seemly position for a Steed.

 

I’m sure you can imagine how well a junior post at the Foreign Office suited me.

 

Women, Mrs Peel? Oh, yes, there were women. I was a precocious young man; at Eton there was the Housemaster’s daughter, Harriet, and then there was Sir Ronald Harvey’s daughter, Samantha. Robert, I believe, even entertained the notion that I would marry Samantha, after the war. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for me, she married a Spitfire pilot in my absence. I did learn very quickly that I was capable of a certain charm, shall we say. And that charm seemed to work. I was hardly a model of purity. But, no; in answer to your question, there was no-one special. Living in London was... liberating. I enjoyed the social whirl. I enjoyed the Debutantes. Pretty girls, most of them, and often as not determined to kick over the traces.

 

Where was I? Oh, yes, the Foreign Office. I couldn’t stay there. It was far too tedious. Not at all what I was used to. One particularly boring day, I went out for lunch and simply never went back. I went to Monte Carlo with Colonel Henshaw’s widow. When she became too keen on the sound of wedding bells, I skipped back to England and once again went back to Arlingham.

 

Sir Robert hadn’t thrashed me since I was thirteen, but I think he would have horsewhipped me then and there if I hadn’t been four inches taller than him. It was not a happy reunion for any of us. Even Amanda seemed to have little sympathy for me. Not that I blamed her in the least, but it made life at Arlingham even more uncomfortable. So I left. It was becoming a bit of a pattern by then, my sudden departure from places.

 

I went back to North Africa. Morocco, Algiers, on to Cairo. Interesting places, to be sure. What money I had soon disappeared, one way or another, and eventually I ended up in the Middle East. Jordan, then Oman. Unstable places just recognising the value of oil. There was plenty of work available for former British Army officers. Security work, that sort of thing. Body guard to a princess one day, military advisor to a Sheikh the next. It was a good life, Mrs Peel. Make no mistake about that. The same qualities the army had recognised and put to work in the Intelligence Corps paid dividends out in the Middle East. Cunning, craftiness, call it what you like, but by the time I left the Middle East, I’d managed to secure a modest financial future for myself. Oil, as I said.

 

The problem was, of course, that I still didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t even know who I was, really. The Squire’s son, or the blacksmith’s grandson? Was I a Steed, part of Arlingham, part of a distinguished family, or was I a Robson, the misbegotten son of a village girl charmed by a wicked landowner? Was I a gentleman or a labourer? I simply didn’t know.

 

It was then, with nothing else to occupy me, that all the contradictions started to torment me. I was an Old Etonian who had started his education in an uncultured village school. I was an ex-officer who had learned how to fight very early, and how to fight dirty. I should have been a blacksmith or a farmhand; I should have been an Ambassador or a priest. I ended up back in Morocco, a young man with no idea of who he was or what he wanted. Too restless to settle, too tormented to wander. There were women, and there was drink. Quite a lot of drink, actually. Yes, quite a lot of women, too, if you insist, Mrs Peel. I think I was a very odd sort of man in those days. I had the manners of an English gentleman, but I behaved like the worst East End felon.

 

So what happened? You may well ask. I say, it really is very late. Are you sure you don’t want to make a move? No? Well, I’ll continue with my story then, if I may.

 

There was a spot of trouble, out in the desert. Local tribesmen making trouble for British interests, that sort of thing. London thought it was serious enough to send a man out to do something about it. Attwood, his name was. Michael Attwood. He worked for MI6, and even if he was a very good agent, he had one little problem - he didn’t know the Bedouin, and he didn’t know the desert. He had a few contacts, though, did Attwood, and one of his contacts told him about a drunken Englishman who had apparently once been in the British Army’s Intelligence Corps.

 

He found me in one of those bars that aren’t supposed to exist in Muslim countries, but do. He appealed to my sense of patriotism, and when that didn’t sober me up, he offered me money. It wasn’t either that made me agree to help him. It was the stirring of something inside me. A sense of something that I hadn’t felt since the war. Excitement, perhaps. Whatever it was, it broke through my jaded apathy, and I agreed to take him out into the desert.

 

Explosives, Mrs Peel. I hadn’t played with plastic explosive since the war, but the two of us blew a fair-sized hole in the desert, and stopped the Bedouin raiding parties that had been plaguing the British engineers looking for oil. For a few days we were a good team, Attwood and I, and when he said goodbye and went back to England, I started to think about what I was doing, sitting on the edge of the desert watching my life pass me by.

 

I didn’t go back immediately. I left North Africa and wandered around for a month or two. Indonesia, Australia, America. I saw and did a lot of things I don’t really care to remember, but in the end I went back to London from New York.

 

Arlingham hadn’t changed, even though I hadn’t seen it in more than five years. Sir Robert hadn’t changed very much, either, but I had. I wasn’t Major Jonathan de V. Steed any more. I was simply John Steed, an odd mix of conflicting ancestry, the black sheep of not just one family, but two. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew who I was. Not Sir Robert’s son, or John Robson’s grandson, but my own man. A carefully selected combination of things all bound up with a stubborn desire not to be ruled by anyone’s expectations.

 

I say Robert hadn’t changed very much, but I think he’d finally started to understand me, just a little. I think, during the time I’d been away, when he hadn’t known where I was, or even whether I was alive or dead, he had realised that he would never be able to force me into the image of the son he had always wanted. I think he had begun to understand that I was caught between the two opposite poles of my heritage, and couldn’t ever really belong to either. He was no less gruff with me, no less scathing, but I think he had begun to respect me. If only for my bloody-mindedness.

 

My grandfather had died during my time abroad. The smithy had been sold, and most of the old man’s estate - which amounted to very little - had passed to his nephew. I was genuinely surprised to find that I had been mentioned in his will. He left me his fob watch, and his nephew, Colin, a steady and honest man, upon hearing that I was back in England, took pains to pass it to me. It was an inheritance I was strangely honoured to have.

 

Through old friends I’d known since army days, I approached MI6. Their attitude towards me was somewhat ambivalent, and a brusque Colonel referred me to MI5, suggesting that a man of my “talents” would be better deployed with that illustrious organisation. I won’t bore you with the details of selection and training, Mrs Peel. Suffice it to say that eventually I became a fully-fledged MI5 agent.

 

It would be nice to be able to say that MI5 was everything I had hoped for, but inevitably, it wasn’t. Much of the work was tedious and repetitive. Spying, Mrs Peel, is not as glamorous as those cheap thrillers would have you believe. The Cold War was very cold, back in the ‘fifties, and I seemed to spend a large amount of my time investigating perfectly innocent Soviet citizens domiciled in the United Kingdom. There was the odd fracas that was exciting, and the odd covert operation behind the Iron Curtain that was absurdly dangerous, but most of it was frankly boring.

 

A series of coincidences took me out to Korea in ‘fifty-three, towards the end of the war. As an MI5 agent, I shouldn’t have been there, but sometimes things conspire to make the impossible possible, and I ended up with the enclave of British and Commonwealth troops serving alongside the Americans. It was the second war I’d seen at close quarters, and it wasn’t much different in most ways. I was there to gather intelligence, not to fight, but I wore a uniform again for the first time in years. British Commonwealth Division. It seemed to be a stalemate. The Chinese and Russian supported North Koreans pushed one way, and the South Koreans backed by the Americans and the few Commonwealth troops pushed the other.

 

Korea can be very cold, Mrs Peel. At least, the mountains and the foothills can be very cold, and at high altitudes the snow lies deeply on the ground all year round. I was on my way back from a routine observation of a North Korean munitions dump when they caught me. I’d managed to stumble and sprain an ankle, and I was heading back piecemeal, trying not to freeze to death at night and trying to avoid the patrols that criss-crossed the area. My capture was sheer bad luck, and from that moment things just got worse.

 

If I had been treated as a prisoner of war, things might not have been too bad, but they were convinced I was a spy, and when they searched me, some of the non-standard equipment I was carrying confirmed their suspicions. The nightmare began without drama. I was transferred to a holding camp near Hungnam, then taken into the city for interrogation. Not a pleasant experience, Mrs Peel. Not at all. If I had known then how much worse things were going to become...

 

Are you cold? It really is difficult to heat a house this size properly. Let’s move into the other room; the fire hasn’t quite burned down in there yet. Will you have another drink? Are you sure? It’s really no trouble...?

 

Where was I? From Hungnam I was taken to Chongjin. It’s a strange part of the world, Mrs Peel, where borders cross at odd places, and political alliances come and go. China and the Soviet Union seem to overshadow everything. It was not the best place in the world to be an Englishman facing accusations of espionage. Particularly during the Korean War.

 

The Orientals are very good at interrogating prisoners. Brutality and patience are a deadly combination.

 

When they were certain I’d told them everything I was ever going to tell them, they were left with the problem of what to do with me. Spies are often summarily executed in time of war, Mrs Peel, but I was lucky. No. Lucky is the wrong word. I was not lucky, but neither was I executed. They took me north into Manchuria, first to Mudanjiang, and then to Tao’an on the Songhua river. It seemed that as long as I was alive, I was a potential pawn in games with the West.

 

Pawns. You remember the Chessman Hotel, I assume? Yes, I didn’t think you could have forgotten it. A clever idea, I suppose, to recreate an internment camp, right in the heart of London. You cannot imagine how I felt when that assignment began... when I heard the name “Nee San” spoken aloud again. It struck straight to the heart of me, wakening memories I’d tried so hard to bury deep in the furthest recesses of my mind. I thought, at the time, that I was stepping back into a nightmare... and, really, I think I was.

 

Nee San isn’t far from Tao’an, and Tao’an isn’t much more than a hundred miles from Mongolia. Very cold in the winter, Manchuria, and hot in the summer. Nee San is a prison camp, Mrs Peel. But you know that. It was built to hold political agitators and malcontents, to house foreign prisoners and all the other undesirables who couldn’t safely be interned elsewhere. I’ve been in some terrible places in my life, Mrs Peel, but Nee San was the worst. Can you imagine the hunger and misery rife in such a place? The disease? The smell of death and decay? Rice and a little pork to eat, stagnant water to drink. Cholera, typhoid, malaria. Dysentery.

 

They put me in a cell with straw on the floor and condensation running down the walls, and they closed the door on me.

 

That kind of internment drives men mad, Mrs Peel. Time becomes meaningless. You know, of course, about the clock that always struck three, whatever hour of day or night it was. A subtle torture on its own. Rats. Flies. Sickness. Fog rolling off the Songhua.

 

Escape? Oh, yes. Prisoners dream of escape. When I was still fit and strong, I almost escaped. I even got out of the camp itself, even swam across that damned river... but it was pointless. I was recaptured within hours, and from then my imprisonment was even worse.

 

I didn’t know, at the time, how long I was in Nee San. I tried to keep track of the days, the weeks, but it became impossible. Prisoners dream of escape, and when they lose the heart to dream of escape, they dream about death. The sweet release of eternal darkness. I am not a religious man, but in Nee San I learned how to pray.

 

There is another irony here. If I had been brought up as a Steed from birth, I might never have had the physical and mental resources to survive; but if I hadn’t been a Steed of some description, I might well have stayed rotting in Nee San until the life faded from me. You see, the Steeds still have some influence. Once upon a time, the Steeds were courtiers, and if those days are long gone, the family still has the connections to make sure it’s voice is heard. Amanda, for one, was the daughter of an Earl, and when news of my incarceration finally filtered back to England, Sir Robert started to ask awkward questions at the Foreign Office and at the Ministry of Defence.

 

Politics, Mrs Peel. I have no love of politicians, but it was politics that saved me. Sir Robert used what influence he had, and when that was not enough, he solicited the help of powerful friends. I was not just a British agent who had, embarrassingly for the government, been caught spying, I was the scion of a wealthy and influential family. Sir Robert’s friends asked questions in important corridors, and finally the British opened negotiations to secure my release.

 

I knew nothing of any of it. No-one from the consulate had been able to visit me, and in Nee San any news that reaches the ears of its wretched inhabitants is either very old or very distorted. The first I knew about Whitehall’s success in getting me released was the morning when I was hauled from my cell and thrown into a military car. No-one said a word to me. Half dead from the privations of my internment, I didn’t care what was happening. I thought, vaguely, that I was being taken to my execution; I didn’t care.

 

The journey home was tortuous and confusing. I was flown to Vladivostok, maybe six hundred miles east of Tao’an, and from the Soviet Union I was taken to Tokyo, where I was met by British officials. They tried to explain the situation to me, but I was utterly disinterested. It must have appeared to them that Nee San had broken my spirit. From Japan I went back to England via countless transfers, and when I arrived back on British soil I was taken immediately to Hartwood, the military psychiatric hospital near Aldershot.

 

Are you still cold, Mrs Peel? Only, I thought you were shivering.

 

Almost two years I’d been in Nee San. I was astonished. It had seemed as if I had been there an eternity, and at the same time I had trouble believing I could have been a prisoner for so very long. The war, it seemed, had ended not long after my capture. Another of those ironies I mentioned.

 

I was back in England, but the road back from Nee San was a long and difficult one. I’d been a fit and healthy young man when I’d been captured in Korea - a sprained ankle notwithstanding - but by the time I reached Hartwood my health was ruined. I’d escaped serious disease, but captivity, malnutrition and dysentery had all taken their toll. I felt as if I had aged fifty years. I was only in my early thirties, Mrs Peel, but I was as weak and enervated as a sick old man.

 

You asked me once why I had such a jaundiced view of the psychiatric profession. Then, I laughed the question away with some flippant comment. Now, I can tell you that it was the time I spent at Hartwood that made me... uncomfortable... in their presence. I was questioned, counselled and evaluated at Hartwood until I almost wished I was back at Nee San. My physical recovery was slow, but it was steady, and eventually, after longer than I care to remember, I was allowed to go home. To go back to Arlingham.

 

What could I do but thank Sir Robert? It had been his determined intervention, and that of his friends, that had secured my release. For so long I had seen him, if not totally as an enemy, then as an opponent to spar with. I had never before stopped to consider that for all the dissension and antagonism between us, Sir Robert might actually love me as a son. In his own gruff, indomitable way.

 

Both of my adopted parents were shocked by my frail condition. I could only be grateful that neither of them had seen me when I had first arrived back in England. It was a mild summer that year, and I spent most of it at Arlingham, resting in the sun and strolling gently in the woods. When my strength improved, I started to ride again, rediscovering my love of horses. As the summer ebbed away, I started to accept invitations from old friends. I went to dinner parties and summer balls, but I felt uncomfortable, as if I were a zoological specimen, or an amusing, intriguing oddity to be stared at. With more recklessness than I’d shown in years, I conducted a short and admittedly ardent love-affair with the niece of one of Sir Robert’s friends.

 

When autumn arrived, I presented myself before MI5’s medical board. I expected to be declared fit for service, if only for administrative and routine duties. I did not expect them to dismiss me. It was very politely and diplomatically done, of course, but I was discharged from MI5 with little more than a citation for good conduct. After everything I’d been through, they had decided that it was not in their best interests to retain me. It was an affront it took me a long, long time to forgive.

 

As you might expect, Mrs Peel, Sir Robert wasn’t exactly unhappy about MI5’s decision. I think he thought it was for the best, and genuinely assumed that I would at last be ready to settle into the kind of occupation he had always had in mind for me. He was wrong. Two years in Nee San had only made me more restless, more discontented. If the Second World War had changed me once, then Nee San had changed me again. I had never been particularly cynical until my captivity. Wily and worldly-wise, maybe, but not cynical. I was older, too, and even less amenable to the idea of having my destiny dictated to me.

 

Fortunately, during my internment, the money from my Middle Eastern investments had continued to accrue, and if I wasn’t a rich man, I was certainly wealthy enough to be my own master. Squabbling with Sir Robert about my future was debilitating and infuriating. When I left Arlingham that Christmas, I left it forever. Oh, I’ve visited it now and again over the years, but I never again lived there. It ceased to be my home, just as the little estate cottage had ceased to be my home years before.

 

London was the only place for me. I bought a small but fashionable apartment in Chelsea, joined a brace of gentleman’s clubs and threw myself wholeheartedly into forgetting my past. I became what is still quaintly known as a “man about town”. I drank and gambled, though neither to excess, and I chased beautiful and sophisticated women. I went to fashionable parties, took holidays in Monte Carlo or St. Tropez and lived the high life. I went riding on Hampstead Heath, I went to the theatre and to the opera. I lived the kind of life my father - my real father - would have been proud of.

 

Without intending it, I earned myself something of a reputation as a ladies’ man, became a little infamous for my wilder exploits. In hindsight, I was unconsciously repeating the same pattern I had followed after I had left the army. I even started to travel again, returning to Africa and the Middle East, wandering almost at will.

 

My life changed again in Vienna, of all places. I seem to have an uncanny ability to walk into trouble. In Vienna, there was a girl. Don’t laugh like that, Mrs Peel. The girl was a spy, a French spy, and she was desperately trying to get back to Paris with the information she had gathered about a Soviet spy-ring. It was my training both as an Intelligence Officer and as an MI5 agent, I suppose, that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise when I saw her dodging through the crowded foyer of the Opera House. I recognised that hunted, resolute look, that nervous, adrenaline-charged way of moving.

 

I wasn’t a knight in shining armour, far from it, but she was a pretty girl and I... well, I was bored, Mrs Peel. Why she trusted me, I still don’t know. It might have been my eccentricity, or the way I stalked the man following her and left him for dead in a back street. Whatever the reason, Claudette decided I was the best potential ally available, and we fled from Vienna together on a night train.

 

Claudette never saw Paris again. The KGB killed her on that train. Whether I was luckier, or simply more experienced, I don’t know, but I managed to evade the Soviet agents all the way to Paris. Why it was important to deliver the information Claudette had lost her life trying to take back, I don’t know, but I did it. The French Security Service arrested me immediately, and after several telephone calls to London, I was quickly deported. I didn’t actually care. It was time to return to England.

 

It wasn’t very many days before there was a knock on my front door. I was politely, but firmly escorted to Whitehall, taken into a building adjacent to the Ministry of Defence and presented to a uniformed Colonel who looked as if he had started his military career in the Boer War. I remember thinking he looked... dusty. He called me Steed. Not “Mister” or “Major”, just Steed. I had a good idea that the anonymous folder on his desk contained every scrap of information about me that the government had. The Colonel was not a man for smalltalk. I might have been a civilian, but he addressed me exactly as he would have addressed me if I’d been standing to attention before him dressed in my uniform.

 

Even when I left the building, I had no real idea of who he was or what organisation he might represent. Somehow, I’d just answered his questions and asked none of my own. It was odd, but I assumed that the French had drawn the MoD’s attention to me and they had simply been reassuring themselves. I went out to dinner with an old friend whose husband just happened to be abroad.

 

Three, four weeks passed. I wasn’t consciously aware of being bored, but evidently I was, because when I was abruptly taken back to that Whitehall office and peremptorily offered a post in Internal Security, one of the MoD’s more covert operations, I accepted immediately. I didn’t even think about it.

 

They sent me to North Wales on the standard training course. I lounged through it with considerable contempt. What could they teach me about security and intelligence work?

 

Internal Security wasn’t like MI5. It was run differently; it operated bizarrely. There was very little in Internal Security that was routine. I never knew what I might be sent to investigate, what I might be ordered to do. I infiltrated arms rackets, I neutralised potential threats to National security. I operated in the strange twilight world that became my home for so many years. Everything was covert, clandestine. Even Sir Robert had no idea that I had returned to security work. To all intents and purposes I was still a carefree man about town, but it had become a facade to disguise the true nature of my life.

 

I was allowed remarkable leeway. Internal Security expected results, and as long as those results were forthcoming, they placed no restriction on how I obtained them. Once again, I found that my mixed heritage was more of a blessing than a curse. A gentleman I might have been, but my early life, and everything I had endured since, had put a finely honed edge on me. I had truly become myself. John Steed. The Squire’s son, the blacksmith’s grandson. I could live like a gentleman and still kick a man when he was down.

 

I say, Mrs Peel, are you quite sure you’re not tired? This is a very big house, you know. Plenty of spare rooms. You could stay...? Well, if you’re absolutely sure...?

 

You never met David Keel, did you? Well, if there was ever a thoroughly decent man, it was him. I actually felt sorry for him when his fiancée was murdered, but I had a job to do, and I knew we could help each other, so I offered him a deal: if he helped me, I’d see that the men who killed his fiancée were brought to trial. We both kept our sides of the bargain. You would have liked David, I’m sure. A very honest man; a very dedicated one. I can’t imagine any profession would have suited him better than being a doctor. He patched me up a few times, I can tell you. We were... friends. Of a sort. I found him an extraordinarily useful and congenial acquaintance. When he left London to work in a rural hospital, I’d convinced myself that the adoption of an amateur assistant who could be trusted was a splendid idea.

 

It’s hard to find such people, Mrs Peel. There aren’t many people who have the right combination of courage, tenacity, intelligence and loyalty. There are even fewer who possess the right qualities and who are also willing to get involved in such a shadowy world. Present company excepted, I think Cathy was the epitome of such a person. That woman had extraordinary courage, and, you know, she didn’t have a single iota of duplicity in her. Which, I admit, I found frustrating at times. She was certainly never afraid of me. Not for a moment. Good Lord, she could put me in my place with no more than a look or a couple of well-chosen words. I liked her. I liked her enormously. It was a shame, if you’ll pardon my frailty, that she wasn’t quite as fond of me as I would have liked her to be.

 

Venus Smith was a very different proposition, but she was just as useful in her own way. I was genuinely sorry when my little songbird took off for the bright lights of Europe. I hear she became a very popular singer in France before she got married. I wonder where she is now...

 

Cathy was good for me. Internal Security had given me a direction, a purpose, but it hadn’t been able to soothe my restlessness. Not really. Cathy didn’t make me any less reckless, any less impudent, but I daresay she knocked a few sharp corners off me. I discovered later that she found out about my background when we went to a party together and discovered that one of her friends was married to an old friend of Sir Robert’s. I was mortified when I finally discovered she knew, but strangely, it was at that point that our relationship mellowed considerably. Cathy, I think, had never been able to understand my reactions to things. She called me callous, amoral and a good number of other things besides, but once she knew the truth, I think she began to understand me. It was Cathy who bluntly told me that I suffered from an inferiority complex. I laughed at her; but I realised that she was right. I’d always been ashamed of my heritage, and that shame had made me defiant to the point of arrogance.

 

Perhaps that’s why she left. No. There’s no “perhaps” about it. Cathy left because once she understood me it was harder for her to remain indifferent to me. I hate to admit it, but I think she did the right thing. If she hadn’t gone... Well, who knows what might have happened?

 

Which brings me to our chapter in this story. We met at that party in Hampshire, do you remember? I know you do. Algy Patterson introduced us, if I remember rightly. I looked at you, you looked at me, and both of us somehow knew we were going to be friends. More than friends, if I might be so bold. You were certainly a very striking-looking young woman. Incredible cheekbones. It would be indelicate of me to admit to the thoughts that went through my mind when I looked at you. Don’t smile so knowingly, Mrs Peel; it unnerves me.

 

You told me you had a PhD. I told you I had a Bentley. You looked at me as if I was mad, and we danced the last dance together. I would have offered to take you home, but somehow I lost you in the throng. By then I was living in Westminster, and I went home alone, determined to discover more about you. I learned that you were Sir John Knight’s daughter, that you owned Knight Industries; I discovered that you were not only intelligent but fiercely independent. I already knew you were a widow... Well. At the time we both believed that you were a widow. Everyone did.

 

Do you remember how diligently I pursued you? I did everything I could to persuade you to take Cathy’s place; I spent hours trying to convince you that it would be an exciting challenge that would offer you the chance to directly serve your country. Did I have a hidden agenda? Oh, yes. Of course. Why should I bother to try and deny that? You knew I wanted you. But I did want you to be my assistant. I flatter myself that I am a pretty good judge of character, and I was certain you were perfect for the role. I thought that if our relationship became more intimate, it would be an added bonus.

 

We got on so well, right from the start, didn’t we? I don’t think either of us quite believed how quickly we became such good friends. It was strange, in a way, because we were very different in so many ways, and yet... Oh, I don’t know what it was. Chemistry, don’t they call it nowadays? Call it what you like, it was there from the beginning.

 

I liked you. You were beautiful, strong-willed, witty, intelligent - a thoroughly superior specimen of the female species. You amused me, fascinated me, entranced me. You made me look at myself differently for the first time in years. Cathy had certainly smoothed some of my sharp corners, but it was you, my dear, who caused a genuine transformation in me. Suddenly I wanted to live up to someone else’s expectations. Suddenly I forgot to be quite so self-serving, quite so ruthless. I did my job as well as I had ever done it, but there was something else easing into my life. Something equally important. Friendship. Affection. Respect.

 

Honesty can be painful, Mrs Peel. Painful and embarrassing. But I have no intention of stopping now I have told you so much.

 

I’m a red-blooded male, Mrs Peel. You, of all people, know that. I have always been at my best in female company. I’m fortunate, because women often seem to look at me just as much as I look at them. If I sleep alone, I do so by choice. It was the same then. Women had flitted in and out of my life for years. Some of them I’d been deeply, sincerely fond of. Some of them had been little more than midnight opportunities. Whatever, I certainly wasn’t used to being with a woman I wanted so much and yet not touching her. I’d be a liar if I said that the idea of an elegant seduction never crossed my mind - but somehow the idea didn’t seem... appropriate. We were friends, Mrs Peel, and something in me wasn’t prepared to compromise that friendship. Oh, we often flirted outrageously with each other, but we kept our distance, didn’t we?

 

Until that night in Hertfordshire. Do you remember that dilapidated hotel? You thought it was funny, how run-down it was. I was not so amused. I’d had more than my share of squalor in my life, and I wasn’t happy with second-rate accommodation. The assignment over, I wanted to go back to London - it wasn’t a long drive, after all - but you said it was too late at night, that we should stay and go back in the morning. So we stayed.

 

Why that night was different, I don’t know. There was nothing about it that set it apart from any other night, but when we went up the stairs together, we didn’t go our separate ways. Who knows why?

 

Did I kiss you, or did you kiss me? We never could agree about that, could we? Who seduced who that night, Mrs Peel? Or did we simply seduce each other? It doesn’t matter, because the only thing that’s important is that we finally crossed the line between being friends and being lovers. Oh, I remember it perfectly. All of it. I remember holding you in my arms and thinking how slender you were, and yet how strong, how supple. I remember undressing you in the soft light from the bedside lamp. Remember looking at you and thinking that you were utterly perfect. Oh, yes, I remember. Remember you unbuttoning my shirt and kissing my chest, remember your hands on my skin, your lips on mine.

 

So long ago. More than a decade ago, and when I lie awake at night, it seems like only yesterday, and it seems like a lifetime ago. Do you think about it? I know that you do. I can see it in your eyes, Mrs Peel.

 

I wanted you so much, and yet I was afraid of disappointing you. You were so young, so beautiful... Oh, I was vain enough to know I was a handsome man, and experienced enough to know what I was doing, but I was still so concerned that when it was over I’d see disappointment written on your face. I shouldn’t have worried, should I? Because, as it turned out, you wanted me just as keenly as I wanted you, and there was no chance at all of that night being a failure for either of us.

 

You looked so different afterwards. So tranquil. So serene and so sublime. I looked at you and I didn’t have the slightest idea of what it was I was feeling. I didn’t know what it was then, but I know now that it was the dawning of love. Real love. Not infatuation or desire, but genuine, abiding love. At the time it bewildered me, and because I didn’t understand it, I ignored it. You lay there looking up at me, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an expression so lovely and yet so poignant. Were you remembering Peter then? No, I don’t want you to answer that. Some things are better left unsaid.

 

I stayed with you all night. Stayed with you until dawn broke and propriety drove me back to my own room. Who was I then? The illegitimate son of the blacksmith’s daughter, or a well-bred de V. Steed? Who knows?

 

We went back to London, didn’t we? I think we both felt a little awkward, but the moment we parted I started longing to be back with you. It was a feeling that never went away. Never. When I was with you, I felt complete, content, as if my restless quest for who and what I am was over. When I was apart from you I could function completely normally, but part of me was thinking of you, longing for you. It was as if you were a part of me, a part of me that was detachable, and yet essential.

 

Do you remember that summer, Mrs Peel? The summer of ‘sixty-six. England won the World Cup at Wembley. That summer seemed to go on forever. I’m sure my memory is playing tricks on me, but I remember it as a long, warm summer that never seemed to end. We enjoyed that summer, and all the months that followed it. It was a good time. For both of us, I like to think. We did so much together, worked together, played together, made love together. I don’t think I ever consciously thought about the future, back then. Everything was so right, so natural, that I think I just assumed it would last forever.

 

Do you remember your birthday in ‘sixty-seven? I took you to Paris and to St. Tropez. We drank champagne and we made love, and we knew that we belonged together. Didn’t we?

 

Neither of us had said anything about commitment. Neither of us tried to talk about the future. Yet, neither of us, so far as I am aware, strayed. Why would we? Oh, we both flirted with other people, but it was a game, Mrs Peel. We both knew that. We always knew that whatever happened, we’d go home together, because we were a couple. We didn’t need to advertise the fact. It was just true. Steed and Peel, a perfect, unbeatable team.

 

I loved you. I barely knew it myself, until it was too late, but I loved you. I was _in_ love with you, too. If... If things hadn’t changed, I might well have forgotten myself and asked you to marry me. All my life I’d been incomplete, a shattered man trying to live up to his own image and ideals, and when I lay in your arms, I was whole. The demons retreated, the ghosts melted away. None of it mattered, not my antecedents, not Nee San, none of it. With you, I was complete. I was real.

 

Some things, Mrs Peel, are so intense that they stay burned sharply into memory forever. Learning that Peter Peel was alive and returning to England was one of those things. We didn’t spend every night together, and that morning I was alone at Stable Mews. I picked up the newspaper, and there it was. The news that effortlessly tore my life apart. You were not a widow. Your husband was alive.

 

I knew you’d go to him. I knew you so well, and I knew that you wouldn’t consider anything else but going back to him. Peter was your husband and I... Well, I was your friend. Your colleague. Coincidentally your lover. Tragically, the man who loved you with all his heart.

 

You made a choice, Mrs Peel, but so did I. I made a choice I had never made in my life. I decided who I was. Who I was to be forever.

 

The blacksmith’s grandson would have fought tooth and nail to keep you by whatever means he could. The Squire’s son chose to let go with dignity.

 

I expect you wondered why I so calmly let you walk away. Why I made no attempt to persuade you not to go. By now, you should understand. I’d spent so long in conflict that the peace I’d found with you was like balm on my abraded soul. I didn’t want to lose that peace. To keep it, I had to reconcile everything in me that would have torn me apart the moment you stepped out of my life. I had to make a choice. I had to decide who I really was, who I really wanted to be. I chose to be the Squire’s son. The gentleman. Gentlemen step aside, Mrs Peel.

 

Oh, I could have fought to hold you - but only as the blacksmith’s grandson. The rough and ready village boy. The bastard son of a dead rogue and a wilful girl who never amounted to anything. And if being with you had taught me anything, it was that I didn’t want to be the blacksmith’s grandson. I made my choice, Mrs Peel, just as you made yours, and we said goodbye. I will never forget that last look you gave me, that last smile.

 

I watched you drive away with your husband, and if I felt anything beyond numb acceptance, it was a distant hope that you would be happy. You may not believe it, but it gives me no pleasure to learn that your marriage failed. I’m truly sorry about the divorce.

 

Mrs Peel, don’t cry. You know I have never been good at coping with crying women. Here, take my handkerchief. That’s better. Let me get you a brandy. No, I insist. It’s far too late for you to go back to London now. Have a drink while I finish my story, and then I’ll show you to the guest room.

 

Internal Security had changed over the years. The days of amateur helpers had gone. When you left, they assigned me a partner. You remember Tara, I expect? Tara King? She told me that you met on the stairs that fateful day. Well, they gave me Tara as a partner. Just out of training, she was woefully inexperienced, and I’m sure that’s why she was assigned to me. If anyone could keep her alive and correct her mistakes, then it was me. Truly, I didn’t know what to make of her. She was so young. Much younger than you. So young, so keen, so impulsive. In the beginning, at least, keeping her alive and out of serious trouble was a full-time job. Maybe that was the point - I had to spend so much time worrying about Tara that I couldn’t brood over losing you. Clever, the top brass.

 

That girl had a will of iron, though, I’ll give her that. She was young, she was naive, but she was sharp, and she was determined to succeed. When she made a mistake - and she made plenty - she learned from it. A will of iron, as I say. What Tara wanted, Tara got. In the end, that included me. Or, more accurately, in the end, that included the blacksmith’s grandson. It seemed I could never quite exorcise that demon. Almost, but not quite.

 

I was flattered, Mrs Peel. I was feeling old and tired, and I’d lost the woman I truly loved. Tara was young, pretty. Vivacious. And she adored me. What sane, red-blooded man could refuse and keep on refusing?

 

It was different. It was nothing like what we had. Oh, I was fond of her, certainly. I felt responsible for her, felt an obligation to look after her, but I didn’t love her. Not at all. Tara knew it. Tara always knew it, and when she realised that my feelings weren’t going to change, it started to eat away at her. Unrequited love is destructive, Mrs Peel. I didn’t love her, and I couldn’t pretend to. In the end, she stopped staying over at Stable Mews. There were no scenes, no arguments; we simply stopped sleeping together. It was for the best.

 

She went to Europe. To West Berlin. Her apprenticeship served, she was offered an external posting, and she took it. I drove her to the airport myself. The greatest tragedy is that I don’t think Tara had ever stopped loving me. Not really.

 

Our paths still cross occasionally. Sometimes when she’s in London we go out to dinner together. She has matured into a very proficient agent. I always knew she would succeed - if she survived her first few months in the field. I’m really rather proud of her. No, Mrs Peel, she doesn’t love me. Not anymore. Tara grew up. No, I don’t regret it.

 

I stayed with Internal Security, of course. What else could I have done? The years marched by, and I was promoted to Executive Field Officer. They gave me a dozen young agents to command and a Whitehall office with a brass nameplate on the door. Well, Sir Robert always wanted me to have an office in Whitehall, so I suppose I’ve come full circle.

 

Yes, I do still work out in the field. When I can. I have a pair of the more senior agents as my assistants. We are a good team. I think I amuse them. They see me as a dinosaur, I’m sure. One of the Old Guard. I let them have their head most of the time. They know what they’re doing. Gambit reminds me of myself at that age, in some ways. Brash. Headstrong. Opinionated. Gambit has some problems with authority. He tries to needle me, sometimes, about my status, my background. He thinks I’m too aristocratic for Internal Security. If he only knew...

 

Which brings us, almost, to where we started. I bought this house a few years ago. I rather fancied breeding horses. Arlingham? Well, when Sir Robert died, Arlingham should have passed to me, but I didn’t want it. There are too many ghosts. I signed it over to Sarah for her son. When he inherits it, it will be the end of an era. No more Steeds at Arlingham Hall. That’s rather sad, in a way, don’t you think? After hundreds of years. But it can’t be helped. I am the last of the Steeds. The last of the de V. Steeds from Arlingham, anyway. There are distant cousins who will stop the name dying completely, but the Arlingham dynasty will die with me for want of an heir.

 

I thought, until very recently, that I had finally found a measure of contentment. When I reached fifty it seemed that I finally knew who I was and what I was doing with my life. I was enjoying my career, I was enjoying my home. Beautiful women, beautiful horses. The countryside all around me. A certain status in the local community as a land-owning gentleman who rode to hounds every weekend. I thought I had achieved the equilibrium had that evaded me for so long. I really think Robert might finally have been proud of me, if he could have seen me settled here.

 

I’ve come a long, long way from that ramshackle cottage with no electricity and no bathroom, Mrs Peel. I have almost forgotten the childhood taunts that used to dog my heels. I have nearly forgotten the way my mother used to cuff me out of the way when she had been drinking, or the various rough farmhands who would be sitting at the kitchen table when I got up for school. I have almost forgotten the sight of my father’s hearse rolling eerily down Arlingham’s long drive. I only choose to remember the summer sun glinting on the lake, the scent of freshly mown grass. The simple childhood pleasures of fishing for sticklebacks in the stream, or climbing the big oak trees on the village green.

 

Until now, I chose to remember you as the laughing, spirited girl who used to sit beside me in the Bentley, as the beautiful, alluring young woman who used to silently take me by the hand and lead me to the bedroom. I didn’t choose to remember the day you left. I didn’t choose to remember the pain of the shocking realisation that I loved you the way I had never loved anyone, or the aching void you left in my heart when you walked away from me.

 

You think I’m being cruel? Really, Mrs Peel, that is not my intention at all. I told you earlier when we first started talking that I would be completely honest with you. Honesty seems to be one of the few things that remains important as the years roll gently by.

 

It was purely a whim to telephone you. There have been other excuses that I have successfully ignored. I’m not sure why I went ahead and dialled the number then. Perhaps because I knew I was going immediately to France, that I could make the call and dart away before there could be any repercussions. To hear your voice again after so many long years...

 

It was too intense. I had to keep the conversation brief and light. Just speaking to you at all was onerous enough, emotionally. Emotionally? Yes, I know that’s a word you’ve hardly, if ever, heard me use. I am the product of my generation, Mrs Peel. Sir Robert managed to instil some sense of genteel propriety into me. The discussion of such things is... unbecoming.

 

I was glad, though, that we had spoken at last. I went to France feeling almost elated. Of course, I came home feeling rather more sorry for myself. My shoulder? Oh, it’s fine now, really. Just a little sore. The bullet missed anything vital. It aches when I try to sleep, but it’s almost healed. Really, I could be back at work now, but I thought I would indulge myself and take the sick-leave they offered. Now, where was I...? Oh, yes.

 

I was glad that I had telephoned you, that a decade of silence had been broken, but I had no calculated intention to call you again. I thought, probably, that such an act would be both foolish and unwelcome. It honestly surprised me when I picked up the receiver and heard your voice, so soft, so... hesitant. Surprised me and... unsettled... me. I could not imagine why you would be telephoning me, unless...

 

Did you find that first luncheon as excruciating, as I did? We behaved like polite, distant strangers. Polite, distant strangers with the weight of the world between us. The air itself seemed oppressive. So many things to be said, and no way of saying them. I won’t lie to you, Mrs Peel. I went home from that luncheon inordinately depressed. When I first saw you walking into the restaurant to meet me, my heart soared. I felt... I felt like a gauche adolescent facing the ordeal of a first date. That probably amuses you, that I, I who always appear so confident, so self-possessed, could have been feeling so nervous, so apprehensive.

 

You were - are - still so very beautiful. Perhaps even more so, if I might dare to be so bold. I watched you walking towards me, and all I could think about was the way I had loved you. Do you remember our conversation? So stilted, so careful. Neither of us wanted to trespass, neither of us wanted to say aloud anything that might recall other days. Painful days. I came back here, Mrs Peel, and I was convinced, utterly convinced, that there was no way back through the years. I’m right, too. There is no way back. What we had then was unique. It was a very special time; a time that must remain fixed in memory. We cannot go back and reclaim those days - they are over. They are gone forever. Someone said something once about memory being the only possible time machine, and they are right.

 

I didn’t expect you to arrive here today. I didn’t expect to open my front door and find you standing there looking pale but determined, and quite, quite lovely. I’m sorry I was not better prepared to receive guests, Mrs Peel, but I hope you found the meal acceptable?

 

The past is a closed book. We both know it. The people we were then no longer exist, save in memory. Time has changed us both, for better or for worse. I doesn’t matter a jot. It doesn’t matter a jot, because when I look at you the breath still stops in my throat just as it always did. When I look at you, I am still possessed by the urge to reach out to you, to take hold of you and make you a part of me.

 

You look surprised, Mrs Peel. I wonder why? Did you, perhaps, honestly believe that I could ever have stopped loving you?

 

It would have been easier to stop breathing.

 

I can’t pretend that I have spent a decade pining for you, or that I have been living an ascetic, celibate life waiting for your return, but I can tell you that you were never far from my thoughts, that the delicate, desperate hope that one day you’d walk back into my life never left me. I say, you’re not crying again, are you...?

 

I told you that things have never been as simple for me as they seemed. It’s true. There always seemed to be something complicating every issue I addressed. Whether it was a restless part of myself, or something else. Look at me, Mrs Peel. What do you see? A middle-aged man who has spent his entire adult life trying to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. I wasn’t born with any blazing desire to right the wrongs of this world; I wasn’t born with a sense of patriotism and duty. Everything I have done, I have done in an attempt to appease the warring parts of me. I crave excitement, I need danger. Without it, I very quickly become jaded and listless. I have achieved more than many men, and when I have fallen from grace I have fallen further than most simply because I have reached up higher than most.

 

Do you begin to understand me now, Mrs Peel? Do you understand why I have done all the things I have done? Why I am the man I am now? Why you and I belong together?

 

Mrs Peel...?

 

I’m sorry, I misunderstood your silence. I thought I had presumed too much.

 

We can’t reclaim the past, Mrs Peel, but we can claim the future. Why should it matter that ten years have passed by? You and I, my dear, are the best - the only? - people in the world for each other. We knew it from the moment we met, didn’t we?

 

Will you stay with me now, Mrs Peel? I can’t imagine that you summoned the courage to walk back into my life with the intention of walking out of it again.

 

Look. The fire has burned away to ashes. It won’t be very long now before the sun starts to rise. I’ve told you my story, the story of the blacksmith’s grandson; let’s sleep for a few hours, then why don’t you tell me the story of Sir John Knight’s daughter...?

 

It’s time we finally understood each other properly, don’t you think? It seems necessary, if we’re going to see out our days together.

 

Why are you smiling at me like that, Mrs Peel? I know that wry smile. Would you prefer me to procrastinate? To dissemble? No, I didn’t think so. I am not making any suppositions, my dear, I am simply stating the truth. Tell me you’re going to leave me again. See? You can’t. I rest my case.

 

Let me escort you to one of the guest rooms, my dear. I’m sure you’ll be able to snatch at least a few hours sleep.

 

Well, of course the guest room, Mrs Peel. Where else would you sleep...?

 

Good Lord, a gentleman would never make that sort of assumption, my dear. No, Emma, you really don’t want to know what sort of assumption the grandson of a blacksmith would make.

 

 

_-the end-_

 

* * *

 

 


End file.
